How the Vote Was Won

In 2009 we launched a project ‘Suffragettes – 100 Years Performing for the Vote’ tomark the 100th anniversary the formation of the Actresses Franchise League, an organisation of actresses and other workers in theatre – playwrights, directors, stage managers, elocution teachers, male actors – to campaign for votes for women. Part of the project’s aims was to document their work in creating campaigning theatre and record the histories of individuals active in and around the League.The project was support by the Arts Council and for this we staged several suffragette plays at the Orange Tree Theatre. In 2010, with funding from HLF we built on this project and delivered an exhibition on the way the suffragettes used the arts to campaign for the vote, including information about local suffragettes such as Princess Duleep Singh who campaigned on the basis of No Vote No Tax in Hampton Court.